Introduction

One weak spot could easily cause your company or your business to fail. Learn how to strengthen and fortify yourself against those weaknesses.

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---Transcript---

Hey, what's up, everybody? This is Russell Brunson. Welcome back to the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Today, I want to talk about finding your weaknesses and fortifying against them so you can be protected in all aspects of your business and your life.

What's up, everybody? Hope you guys are doing awesome today. We are less than two weeks away from Funnel Hacking Live as I'm recording this. In fact, I've been on Slide Smackdown, building out millions of slides, working on presentations, working on video. There's so much that goes into this. It is crazy, but we're having a good time. And I think we'll make it to the finish line in time, as long as nothing bad happens. So there you go. Those of you who are listening in some real time, you know that right now, we're still in the middle of this whole COVID pandemic thing and there's chaos and there's anyway, there's a lot of things.

And so, but as they say in show business, the show must go on. Right? And so we are doing Funnel Hacking Live. We've got, I think about 3000 people coming live to the event. We got another two or 3000 people streaming it live from home. And so yeah, the party must go on. So we're excited. But at the same time, there's a lot of nervousness that comes around it, too, right, for all the obvious reasons. And so I want to talk about just the principle that I've been thinking about and trying to practice specifically around this event with my health, but it ties into so many aspects of your life. And there's actually, there's a story in the scriptures were they talk about this war that's happening right. Then there's the, not the village, but there's the city that's trying to protect itself. Right there in the city, and you look around the city. There's like these hills and these mounds, and there's mountains kind of protecting them. There's a couple of spots in the mountain where there's, it's easier for people to get through, right? So these weak spots where it's easier for an invading army could attack because it's like, these are the spots they'd attack.

And so the guy who's the general of this army is looking at, "Okay, these are the weaknesses. If someone's going to attack us, they're not going to come over the mountain, not going to... They're going to come through this path or this path. And these are the spots that we're weak. Therefore we know these are our weaknesses. We need to fortify against that." So they brought troops and armies and things around the weak spots to protect themselves. And that way, when the enemy came, they will protect themselves and protect their land, Right. So there's the story, the scriptural story with the principle, right? It's finding your weak spots and fortifying against them. And so for me right now in this season is again, I'm about to go to Funnel Hacking Live and there will be a ton of people. And if I get sick, for whatever reason, it could be really, really bad because you could do the math. How many tickets times how much money per ticket times all the, it gets, it'd be really financially bad for the company. It'd be bad because people have flights, hotels. It would just be bad all around. So I need to make sure I'm there. And so the first thing I'm asking is like what are the potential things that would keep this from happening? Right.

What are the potential weaknesses that could take me out of play. Right. And so think about it, one of them is if I fly there publicly, I'm in a plane with 2000 other people. What if, when I'm sick or whatever, that's a scary thing. So I was like, :Okay, I need to figure out a different way to get there." So we decided I fly private, right. So there's one way we protect ourselves. Number two, I need to make sure my immune system's good. Right. I have not had COVID yet. And so it's like, I haven't had it yet, but I got to make sure my immune system is protected. So what does that mean? Well, okay. What are the steps I need to take? What are the vitamins? What are the things? We've had doctors coming over? You mean IV drips and all sorts of stuff to like strengthen my immunity so that I can handle it, right. I've been trying, which is hard for me. I'm trying to get more sleep and trying to not stress, I'm trying to relax, all the things that typically weaken someone's immune system, right. So I'm finding those things, I'm trying to fortify against them.

Now that doesn't mean, just like the story with the army, doesn't mean the army is not going to get through and attack them. They might, right. And maybe the army breaks through and even though fortified, it gets through, right. Like I could still get sick. I could still have different issues, like a million things that could happen, but I know where the weaknesses are. Therefore I should fortify against it, right, and try to protect myself. And so that's kind of the message.

And so I want to show you guys because that's true in a lot of areas of life. For example, I'm not obviously the health guy I would recommend for everyone knowing, again, the situation the world's in right now is like looking at your own health. Where are my potential weaknesses? Do I need to lose weight? Do I need to get strength? Do I need to get more vitamins. What are the things you need to personally do to like protect yourself, right? I've got to be looking at those things and how do you fortify against. For you it could be different than me, right. Everyone's got different ways and I'm not going to go, and it's too politically charged to get into it. But if you believe that the vaccine or whatever is the way to do it, then go that way. If you believe that healthy, I don't care what it is. Pick what you personally believe and then fortify yourself against it, right. Look at the stats, look at the studies and figure out what those things are and then protect yourself, right. So there I'll leave that there, because again, it's ridiculous how charged this whole topic is, but it is.

So I'm not going to say one way or the other what I believe or what I think you guys should believe because I don't care. When all is said and done, I think everyone should make decisions for themselves and figure out what's best for them, their family, but then go through it and like go intense on it. Don't, anyway. So then I want to transition to business because you guys come here to learn business from me, not to learn health. So let's talk about business.

So I want you to think about, in your business, like what are the same things like everyone's got the same thing, right. There's there's weaknesses that you got to fortify against. I was thinking back the very first time that I was growing my business, very first collapse that I had was because I had no, I only had one traffic source. And so when that traffic source disappeared, my business disappeared as well, right. And I went through the crash right then because I hadn't fortified. If I had been smart, I was okay, but with my business where's the choke point. What's the thing that I'm weak at. Okay. It is, I only have one traffic source. Therefore I need to go there and fix that and strengthen it and put those things around it to protect it, right. So that was the first time.

The second time my business crashed is because I only had one merchant provider and that one merchant buyer decided they didn't like my business, everything got shut down. Right. And it was my choke point I hadn't fortified against. So as we started building ClickFunnels, we were very strategic. "Hey, what are all the things that could happen? Like what are the things that could make our business fall down?" And we had to be very, talk about it very openly, because a lot of times we don't want to think about these kinds of things, right, because they don't sound good. But when it was like, what if Russell gets hit by a bus? What if Todd gets hit by a bus, right? What happens if a merchant account shuts us down? What happens if our auto responders, what happens if our traffic dries up? What if Facebook's ads stop working? What if, what if and we started thinking through all these different weaknesses, right. Just like the army general is looking at, here in the mountains where people are going to attack us, right. Or me going to an event. Like these are the things that could happen to make them not happen, right. If I got sick or if these different things so you're identifying, you're being very real, right.

And you're having conversations that aren't fun to have, like Russell gets hit by a bus. That's not a fun conversation to have, what do we do, right. But it's looking at those things, identifying them and then say, "Okay, how do we fortify against these weaknesses? Okay. What are the things? What are the things I need to do to make sure I'm protecting myself, right? Do I have the second merchant account in case I need it? Do I have this, looking at all different pieces and having backup plans and having things in place." Because it's crazy how fast things happen in this industry, in this business. I seen so many people who have really good businesses who've lost them quickly because they didn't fortify because they ran the whole business on Facebook ads and Facebook shut down. They run their whole business on SEO and they got slapped, right. And so it's finding what are the choke holds in your business? And they're going to be different for everyone, right? Some of you might have a key employee who just runs everything. If that person disappeared, what would you do, right? Or a partner or you, right. And so it's something that I don't know the answer to, but I want to raise the question because I would be doing you guys a disservice if I didn't bring that up.

So it's not running through your head. Because I didn't think about my traffic sources and the first time I got slapped. I didn't think about my merchant count, the second time I got slapped, right. I was looking at all the positive because we're entrepreneurs, we're looking at the positive, looking at the vision, looking at the future, we're looking at the things that we think are going to be so great,. Right. And we're not looking at like, "Oh, what if this happens? What if this happens? We're optimists, right?" And so everything's always going to work out. But the reality is sometimes it doesn't and if we're prepared for it, we fortified against that, we've got backup plans. We can move, we can shift. We can make those adjustments. If you don't, that's when you get in trouble. And so I want to protect you guys.

So that was the point of this podcast episode is to protect yourself. The podcast cover image I'm using this time is me sitting at my desk with a whole bunch of IVs plugged into me because I spent seven hours yesterday with IVs of every known substance, known to man going into my blood system to protect me and increase my immune system and to help me have the energy and all the different things, right. And so it's those kinds of things that we're doing. And yeah, it's funny. I actually was Instagramming yesterday as I was doing it and I got tons of messages to people like, "Are you okay? Are you dying? Are you sick? What's happening?" And I'm like, "No, this is a preventative, right." And it's funny because most of us, and this comes back to us as humans being pessimistic or optimistic. We're optimists.

My dad sells insurance or he did before he retired, but he sold insurance and the insurance that they would get the biggest bonuses and rewards for was selling life insurance. And I talked to my dad about this because life insurance, you don't have to have, right. But it's the one that's like the most important. But he says it was the hardest to sell because no one wants to think about that. Oh, I'm going to live forever. I'm going to be fine. And they pushed that out so it was very, very difficult to sell life insurance, yet it's the thing that's probably the most important of all of them, right? It's easy to sell car insurance, easy to sell house insurance, things like that. But the one that's the most critical, it's hard to sell because people are all optimistic. Oh I'm going to live forever. I'm going to be healthy. You know, whatever it is. And they don't think about it. And then it hits and it's too late.

So same thing's true for us as entrepreneurs. We have to be thinking about those things and putting it in perspective. So, that said, prepare yourself, prepare your health, prepare your business, prepare your life, prepare your family. Look at the things that could go wrong and start building strength holds around them. Hope this helps. Appreciate you guys. Thanks for listening. And we'll see you on the next episode of the Marketing Secrets Podcast. Bye, everybody.

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